f
his own. In both the great revivals of literature, the very material of
poetry was allegory.

The father falls asleep on his child's grave, and has a dream, or rather
a vision, of a country where everything--after the childish imagination
which invents differences instead of discovering harmonies--is
super-naturally beautiful: rich rocks with a gleaming glory, crystal
cliffs, woods with blue trunks and leaves of burnished silver, gravel of
precious Orient pearls, form the landscape, in which are delicious
fruits, and birds of flaming colours and sweet songs: its loveliness no
man with a tongue is worthy to describe. He comes to the bank of a river:

Swinging sweet the water did sweep
With a whispering speech flowing adown;
(Wyth a rownande rourde raykande aryght)

and the stones at the bottom were shining like stars. It is a noteworthy
specimen of the mode in which the imagination works when invention is
dissociated from observation and faith. But the sort of way in which some
would improve the world now, if they might, is not so very far in advance
of this would-be glorification of Nature. The barest heath and sky have
lovelinesses infinitely beyond the most gorgeous of such phantasmagoric
idealization of her beauties; and the most wretched condition of humanity
struggling for existence contains elements of worth and future
development inappreciable by the philanthropy that would elevate them by
cultivating their self-love.

At the foot of a crystal cliff, on the opposite side of the river, which
he cannot cross, he sees a maiden sitting, clothed and crowned with
pearls, and wearing one pearl of surpassing wonder and spotlessness upon
her breast. I now make the spelling and forms of the words as modern as I
may, altering the text no further.

"O pearl," quoth I, "in perles pight, _pitched, dressed._
Art thou my pearl that I have plained? _mourned._
Regretted by myn one, on night? _by myself._
Much longing have I for thee layned _hidden._
Since into grass thou me a-glyghte; _didst glide from me._
Pensive, payred, I am for-pained,[25] _pined away._
And thou in a life of liking light _bright pleasure._
In Paradise-earth, of strife unstrained! _untortured with strife._
What wyrde hath hither my jewel vayned, _destiny: carried off._
And done me in this del and great danger? _sorrow._